The Washington Post reported on August 11 the findings from a research carried out by the Pew Research Center looking for a pattern across 50 states to correlate immigration patterns in the last 15 years against unemployment levels. Results? No clear correlation between the two could be established.

Rakesh Kochhar, main author of the report and an economist at the Pew Hispanic Center in the District concluded that ¤other factors, such as economic growth, have likely played a larger role influencing the American job market. We cannot say with certainty that growth in the foreign population has hurt or helped American jobs.Ë These findings contradict anti immigration supporters that based their position more on intolerance than on scientific research, such as the allegation that foreign workers depress wages and take jobs from American non-skilled and less educated workers.

Census data and estimates show that in year 2000, the United States had 28 million immigrants - legal and illegal - age 16 and older. That equals a 61 percent growth from 1990. By 2004, there were 32 million; the majority Latinos, followed by Asians. Randy Capps, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, described the immigrant tendency to move to ¤booming areas of the country with low unemployment rates.Ë The Report could not establish whether ¤immigrant workers help to cause that boom, but they certainly haven’t detracted from it.Ë

This issue is at the center of a public debate in the USA. As a humanist, do you have a stand?

Well, personally I don’t have an answer to this difficult issue. But as a humanist it certainly seems to me we have to argue that all humans have an equal right to work, and that therefore any policy which helps US citizens to discriminate against foreign workers either at home or abroad (by laws, tariffs, etc.) is irrational.